With the main Ashran changes in 8.2.5, Ashran doesn’t last longer than a regular battleground. The only thing diffrentiating it is the number of people that take part.
For those unaware, the two biggest changes I’m referencing are
Fangral and Kronus now take 3000 artifacts to summon (was 300)
Reinforcements have been reduced to 150 (was 300)
The matches now literally do not last long enough to summon them and they’ve just turned into zergfest massive pushes down the middle.
If nothing else, can we atleast get the reinforcements amount back up to 300?
an ‘Epic BG’ that takes less time than Warsong Gulch… I mean why? I get that the original iteration could take over an hour to resolve and if you were on the losing side it was pretty brutal BUT…
in that time it gave you a chance to coordinate and turn it around. yes the bosses were neigh on impossible to kill but the honour reward was good. with the honour level system requiring so much invested time its just made the grind even more cumbersome.
Please have a think about rebalancing this BG as right now its become ANOTHER zerg fest and we aren’t playing Starcraft. If the player base cant cope with long ‘EPIC BGs’ then there are random bg options for them. Please don’t punish the players that love that old alterac valley feel.
I like Ashran changes, there are far from perfect, but better then exhausting previous version.
I am fine with 150 reinforcements. 3000 artifacts to summon Fungral/Kronus is a bit too much, i agree, 600 or 900 would be ok.
But imo Ashran needs a complete rework. These changes just lowers the time spend in Ashran, which is good, but not enough. More could be done on tactics. It’s still just zerg fight in one point of the map most of the time.
Good, I may not instantly /afk out anymore, then. I feel that neither Ashran and Wintergrap make good Battlegrounds, and they weren’t designed to fit that format.
Wintergrasp (and IoC) require players that know what to do. And that is a lot to ask from modern-day players, everyone just wants to rush forward. AW is a perfect example, when Horde runs up to the last boss and attacks him with 4 A towers still up.
Ashran on the other hand is perfect for them now - zerg rush mid, whoever wins the first clash - wins. We tried to play strategically right now, we got the sphere, AA, but by that time it was 125/70 in alliances favor and they have capped the bridge. Im leaving Ashran now as soon as it starts, its a random lottery, where the team that has better healers, wins.
I think fragments cap should be lowered to 1500, and reinforcements upped to 200. Otherwise do not call it an “epic” battleground.
It will never happen if they allow pve players queue bgs with mythic key and raid gear. Pvp gear must be seperate with their own stat. so you will have players who knows what to do on bgs comparing daily win mythic key players.
It’s a bad morning , afternoon for alliance. Last night I got 4 honor levels in 10 hours.
Now bgs only get loses. Spanish worgen druid player on the bg said this time of the day mostly students play game. Better queue at night to me.
4 honor levels in 10 hours , sun rising , you get only losses. Same with epic bg too.
Last night I won ashran twice without loss. Now epics are losses too. I think I wont queue bg when sun is up.
There were concurrent changes, as OP stated. Games last less because of halfed amount of needed point and summon costs of Elemental Giants went up by x10. So it is very unlikely to see those Elemental Giants again.
Good Changes:
Addition of Solar Sphere in the underground mines, it gives a new point of interest (that should also be defended). That 20% raid-wide haste buff is super strong. I find this kind of changes very good since the players spread more on the map, and there is less lag where the main zerg happens.
Removal of NPCs in the mid-street, the games are less “laggy” than before the patch.
Ancient Artifact doesn’t spawn anymore but is dropped by the Inferno rare at Ring of Conquest, this makes it fair for both sides to get. Also, he isn’t always there (he may spawn later though), which adds some variation to the games, also his “presence” is indicated in the map.
With fewer NPCs and the new Buff it is more likely that a faction CAN kill the enemy Boss in the base.
“Bad” Changes:
BG Duration: A lot of players complained that the BG took too long, I would say that it now lasts too short. If the AA is up, the faction getting it may do a single push to the enemy base, kill their tower NPC (which still gives 50 points! 33% of the 150 needed!) and back-forths on the bridge for the last kills. Most games I was involved in took not more than 20 minutes to end. Epic BGs should take longer IMHO. Some example calculation below.
Pre patch -> kill enemy Tower NPC - 50 points + kill 250 enemies. You may have AA, but it did last 30 min (if you picked the AA right at the moment when it spawned, its timer started to tick if no one picked it up). You may get 200 points during those first 30 mins. Then a long, even zerg phase started, but the losing side had 0 moral when enemies were so many points ahead, and the only change for turnaround (AA) would need 30 min to respawn.
After patch -> Kill enemy Tower NPC - 50 points + kill 100 enemies. You get those 30 mins of AA for sure since you pick it up when it spawns (from the inferno) AND your whole raid may also have the 20% haste buff which makes things even faster AND you advance a lot faster since there are no Giant Elementals with Millions of HP to soak damage.
But overall I am happy with the changes, it feels better than pre-patch
Ashran is terrible because nobody ever dies fast enough to make difference and map is way too big. As long as healers are not going oom this BG will never ever be even decent. Everyone just stacks and starts rope pulling. Its just simply horrible. Even Strand was 100 better, but people were too stupid in it so it was removed completely.
With the new Ashran format, how is ANYONE supposed to get the Divide and Conquer achievements? It requires 5000 (that’s FIVE THOUSAND, not a typo!) kills AWAY from the main road. You know, the road no one leaves anymore. After five full Ashran fights I have 1/5000 progress on that achievement.
The whole problem with Ashran is that it was never designed as a BG and should never have been a BG
They should have just kept it as it was, opt in, do your quests and get out or stay a while to smash faces, constant stream of people joining and leaving kept it feeling alive and made for generally more equal victories often
If they just upscaled it as was and called it a day that would have been so much better but BG Ashran is just an entirely different game then old Ashran because it became a BG and it can never be old Ashran again because it is a BG
Sad, it was the only thing I liked about WoDs later half
